


CALLINGS

by Mikkeneko



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoilers, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Terminal Illnesses, probably not who you're thinking, somebody dies in this fic but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-27 00:01:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5025778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikkeneko/pseuds/Mikkeneko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For years, Anders and Justice have been on the move throughout Thedas, finding and healing the Tranquil. Now, they learn that even a miracle does not come without cost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	CALLINGS

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to [REVEILLE.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4417433)
> 
> For this fic I was picturing a slightly older Anders as looking more or less [like this,](http://mikkeneko.tumblr.com/post/126380587679/alistairsshinyunderoos-wanted-to-take-a-crack) and Justice in the Fade looks [like this.](http://mikkeneko.tumblr.com/post/126378475514/silverchimaera-art-ive-always-kind-of-wished)

  
Anders opened his eyes on the Fade.

Through the years since he and Justice had joined, it had been a long struggle to develop a clear and reliable way to communicate. In the bad early days, they could barely distinguish between each other's thoughts, let alone convey them to each other. Slowly they had learned, developed precision, developed control. With concentration and effort (and privacy,) they could achieve a sort of 'conversation' by having one speak while the other listened, then changing seats. They could also write notes for the other to read -- or, simpler and better, relay them through Hawke.

But some things required more than a scribbled note or secondhand message -- some things required a real presence. Face to face, and heart to heart. It was for this that they had practiced controlled dreaming, pulling them both into a space in the Fade where they could stand separately once more, if only for a little while.

Anders looked around at the familiar little clearing, carpeted with grass and ringed with formless, shifting trees. They were definitely Trees, his mind could identify the idea of a tree in an instant -- tall things with solid trunks, straight limbs and topped with clouds of green -- but the specific details of the bark, the shapes of the leaves and even the exact color were a disordered blur. The sky overhead was greenish and pale, and he seemed to be alone. "Justice?" he said aloud.

The blurry trees shifted and whispered, as though wind were blowing through them, and Anders felt a tingle run down his spine as a cascade of murmuring voices poured in his ear. He saw a shimmer out of the corner of his eye and knew he was no longer alone -- if he ever had been.

He turned around and saw the glittering shape of blue coalesce, gain shape and definition. It was a man's shape, tall and rangy, clad in plate armor with the hilt of a longsword resting between gauntleted hands. His head was bare, long hair bound in warrior's braids -- that would have been blond, had they a color. The face was a mirror of Anders' own, but the eyes, when they opened, were depths of pale blue fire.

"Anders," Justice said, the resonance of his voice making the Fade tremble around them. Although his appearance had altered over the years -- first to take on Anders' likeness, then to grow into something more suited to himself -- his voice had always been his own. "You wished to speak to me?"

"Just checking in," Anders said, his chest running at once hot and cold -- with relief, that Justice had answered his call.... and anxiety, that he could ask the question he'd come to ask. "It's been a while since we've talked, what with everything that's been going on, there just hasn't been time..."

That wasn't exactly true, and both of them knew it. Their life was never truly peaceful, never quiet -- a fact that they had accepted years ago. The work was never done, the fight never fully finished... even now that Leliana had ascended to the post of Divine, and formally abolished the Circles, the fight was still never truly finished. Not all the lands of the Chant were willing to accept the announcement, and between stubborn baronets and rogue Templars who had renounced Chantry allegiance, there was always more work to be done: prisons to raid, mages to liberate, tyrants to cast down. Tranquil to heal. Always, more healing to be done. Even between the running battle that was their lives, there was always healing to be done -- of magical, physical, or even spiritual nature. Too many old wounds that still hurt and bled when touched, for which the only cure was care and time.

Not all of the Tranquil that he and Justice had healed together had stayed with them, of course; once restored to the freedom of choice, most of the Tranquil chose to make their lives elsewhere. But enough of them _had_ stayed -- out of loyalty, or gratitude, or simply having nowhere to go back to -- to lend them a small army. The Reawakened, they called themselves; and the red sunburst symbol fluttered proudly from hand-stitched banners floating over ranks of tents that surrounded their sleeping body at this very moment -- no longer the symbol of the Chantry, in all its corruption, but the symbol they each bore on their brows, the symbol of their triumph.

It all added up to a lot more administrative work than he'd expected, back when he first committed to becoming a revolutionary.

But now, things were as peaceful as they ever were. There were enough of the Reawakened who had re-learned -- or in some case, learned for the first times -- the tasks of daily living, and those were able to care for and teach the others. Aside from a constant trickle of mage refugees that were always coming in, there were no battles to fight, no vengeance to flee, and no great mountains to move.

It should have been almost idyllic. It should have been almost perfect.

But it wasn't.

"I've been worried about you," Anders admitted at last. "You've seemed more..." _faint, weak, quiet, exhausted,_ "distant lately." He tried to spice it up with a charming smile. "Was it something I said? Something I did?"

"I apologize," Justice said soberly. Even now, his presence seemed shadowed and dim; he didn't fill the small corner of the Fade like he normally should, his essence overflowing the dreamworld and spilling into reality in a cascade of eldritch power. His voice resonated, but it did not rock the earth. He glowed, but he did not blind. "I did not mean to leave you feeling lonely. You have done nothing wrong, said nothing wrong. It is nothing in you... it is me."

All jokes and deflections aside, it was what Anders had suspected -- what Anders already knew. He swallowed down against the knowing, clawing like panic at his throat. "What... what's wrong?"

Justice looked at him, his burning gaze piercing right through his fragile self-control. "You already know," he said. "I am -- fading."

"What? _Why?"_  Anders cried out. "Spirits -- I thought spirits are immortal. Is it me? Is it because I'm getting old? Is it the Taint? I don't want to drag you down with me -- isn't there something we can --"

Justice cut him off with a gesture, a shake of his head. "It is not you. Or rather, it is us," he said. "The work we do, Anders. The Awakened."

Anders understood, the knowledge flowing between their minds once Anders had stopped unconsciously blocking their channel. _The Re-awakened._ The Tranquil mages whose connection to the Fade had been severed, the connection they healed. The act that took two of them together -- Anders to heal the damaged brains, and Justice to provide the spark that bridged the gap between man and soul.

It wasn't enough just to expose the Tranquil's mind to Justice's power; the effect would just fade again when they left, as it did for Karl. To achieve a true healing, Justice had to leave a part of himself behind, every time, to be the bridge back into the Fade. It took only a spark -- only a fraction of the spirit's power. But it was a spark that never came back to him. He was a spirit; he was power, he was dream. But even he was not without limit -- and spirits did not replenish themselves, could not heal, as mortals did.

"Oh... oh Maker..." Anders' hands rose, pressed to his face as though they could shield him from the truth. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"It was a sacrifice I willingly undertook when we began this work," Justice answered.

"I wouldn't have done it if I'd realized it was going to _kill you!"_  Anders shrieked.

"Would you have not?" Justice tilted his head, considering him. "I would. I did. _You_ would have given your life many times over for the cause. Does it truly surprise you to learn that I would do the same?"

"But -- if this keeps going, if you really -- if you really _disappear --_ " Anders' mind ratcheted forward, cascading unstoppably through the consequences. "Does that mean you won't go back to the Fade? That you won't... reincarnate, like the other spirits do?"

"I don't know." Justice turned away slightly, closing in on himself. "I... believe so."

"We've got to stop!" Anders cried. "We can't do this any more."

Justice shook his head slowly. "And leave others still maimed, knowing that we could have healed them?" he asked. "That we could have helped them, but refused for our own selfishness?"

"Well if you're _dying,_  then we're going to stop being able to help them pretty quickly either way!" Anders snarled back at him. "Why not stop one short?"

"Anders..." Justice sighed.

"It's not fair!" Anders buried his head in his hands again, pressing back tears. "Why should your life matter less than theirs?"

There was no footstep, but suddenly Justice was there, having closed the gap between them. The Fade shifted and ran like water around them as Justice took control of it, took hold of Anders' hands and pulled them away. "Look, Anders," Justice said, pushing Anders' chin upwards. "See them as I do."

Unwillingly, Anders looked.

It was the meadow camp where their body still slept -- the main encampment of the Reawakened. At night the camp was dark, but Justice saw with other eyes; wood and canvas were translucent as veils, giving way to the burning souls of the men and women who dwelt within.

There were over a hundred of them, nearly one-third of all the Tranquil that they had healed together. Most of them slept, in cots or in bedrooms in the flickering transparent tents; a few stood watch, or patrolled, or walked to and fro on some errands of their own. But every one of the ex-Tranquil, every one of the Reawakened, had burning within them a tiny seed of brilliant cerulean blue. The few others in the camp -- family members, friends, Hawke's blurred outline beside them in the bed -- were dim and shadowed in comparison.

"Before I joined with you, I held the memories of Kristoff," Justice said. "They were the first to shape me, to define me, on the mortal plane." He turned to look at Anders, his eyes still burning with pitiless truth. "There was one thing that Kristoff longed for, that he never had before he died. You know what it was."

"I don't..." Anders shook his head helplessly.

"You know what it was, because you had the same wish, the same regret," Justice continued remorselessly. "You shaped me as much as Kristoff did, but in this you were the same." He touched his own chest, the glowing faint outline of his hand against the plate. "I am Kristoff, and I am Anders. I am Justice and I have what you and he both longed for and could never have. I have children."

A sob racked Anders.

"These mages, they carry part of me inside them." Justice swept his hand outwards, encompassing the rows and rows of slumbering, banked spirit fire. "They wake from their trance and go on to live their own lives, with their own minds, their own hearts and their own purposes. They are my creations, my triumphs, but they are also their own people. There is nothing more that I could desire for them."

Anders couldn't stop crying. This wasn't real, the tears weren't real, but he was helpless to stop them, helpless to be overcome by grief and pain. Justice embraced him, his familiar strength enfolding him, and rested his forehead against Anders' with a sigh.

"Do you remember the oath that you took at your Joining?" Justice murmured.

"In war, victory," Anders murmured. "In peace, vigilance. In death, sacrifice." He broke that oath when he ran from the Order, but despite the regrets, despite the hurt, he wasn't really ashamed. There were hundreds of Wardens and no Blight; they didn't need just him. The mages needed him more.

"I never took that oath, though it echoed in Kristoff's memories, and in yours. I was never offered." Justice slowly shook his head. "But when I joined with you, I took an oath of my own. Do you remember?"

Anders closed his eyes. He could see Justice either way. He remembered it as though it were yesterday, as though the words were seared in his brain. _"They will be free."_

"And now they are," Justice said, as though that explained everything. "I have no regrets, Anders. I have lived the life of a mortal and I will pass as the mortals do -- without expectation of immortality, except for in what I have passed on to my heirs. To you. Together we have fought, we have healed, we have _changed_ this world.

"By your side I have lived my purpose more fully than I could ever have dreamed, than my brethren could ever imagine. I believe it was for this charge that the Maker made me, that He put me in your path all those years ago." His hands on Anders' shoulders squeezed tight, shook him gently. "This is my task, my purpose. This is my Calling. I will not turn from it now, at the end."

"Please don't leave me," Anders choked, broken with tears. "I need you. I need you."

"You do not," Justice said firmly. "Whatever you sought to find in me all those years ago -- courage, conviction, fortitude -- you need me for no longer. You have those things inside yourself now, as you always did."

"Don't do this," Anders begged him. "I don't want to be alone again --"

A gauntleted hand touched him under the chin, forcing his gaze back up to the vision of the sleeping camp. "You will not be alone," Justice insisted.

"Hawke..." Anders breathed. The other mage had been with him almost as long as Justice himself -- almost since the beginning, back in Kirkwall where it had started. He had flung himself into the cause as wholeheartedly as Anders, without a spirit of Justice to urge him on; he had been Anders' heart, as Justice was his soul, keeping him from despair.

"Yes," Justice said in a sigh. "Hawke. If I may ask one thing..."

"Anything," Anders agreed wretchedly. He didn't want to do anything that could hasten Justice's departure... his _disappearance..._ but neither could he deny him _anything._

"I wish to speak with him before the end," Justice said. "He has been good... to me, to you, to us both. A staunch ally, a good friend. I wish to make some arrangements, and... I wish to say goodbye."

"I can't do this," Anders wept. Even aside from his own selfishness, his own fear -- Justice was his oldest friend. He couldn't see him off on a path of self-destruction -- Maker, he couldn't _help_  him do it.

"You can, because I can," Justice told him firmly, unshakably. Anders knew -- with a kind of desolation, with a kind of peace -- that there was absolutely nothing he could do or say that could dissuade Justice from his course. He had always been the determined one. "We are one, and I have no regrets, no fear. But it is time for you to live your own life again, Anders. It is time for you to wake."

Spirit fire flared, hands pushing against his chest -- gently, but inescapably. Anders struggled against the force of it, reaching back into the Fade, towards his only friend -- but it all ran into a blur around him, ran away like water. _"Wake now..."_

Anders came wide awake, tangled in blankets, the last of the lyrium fizzling as it burned out of his veins. He sobbed aloud, once, before rolling over on his side to bury his face in the pillow. His body shook with spasms of misery, tears pouring out of his eyes; but he bit down on the blanket and did not let a sound escape him, lest it wake the man who still slept innocently beside him.

Was this the fate that awaited a Grey Warden's loved one, on the day that their Calling came to them? No wonder so few of them loved, then -- it hurt too much in the end.

In the morning, he would tell Hawke. In the morning he would begin to face up to this. But tonight was his to grieve.

 

* * *

 

In the morning light, the base camp of the Reawakened spread out over the mountainside like a falling shadow. In an uninhabited, largely uncharted stretch of mountains in the Vales, the no-man's-land hovering around the border between the Free Marches and Nevarra, it was far from any major settlements and the armies they might quarter. The rugged terrain had proven too rocky, too cold and too uninviting for settlement -- which didn't make it easy for their people, either, but the safety afforded by isolation and distance was too valuable to pass up.

At least, having a small city's worth of mages in one place enabled them to make the rocky stretch of ground far more comfortable and safe than it would have been otherwise, with nearly three hundred mages working together to provide water, heat, wards, and a hundred other little things. It hadn't always been that way; most of Anders' followers had come to him with little practical knowledge at all, and even less of it suited for living in the wilderness. The Chantry had liked it that way.

But with years of patience and practice, they had persevered. Hawke had managed to persuade a variety of misfits -- some mages, some not -- to come with them to the campsite in order to teach the apprentices and newly-Awakened Tranquil the skills they needed to survive. Lessons, at least, were something the mages well understood; they'd sat in patient and attentive rows and ranks on rough logs, on rocks, or on the ground as the woodsmen had demonstrated a multitude of skills from starting a fire (without magic,) cleaning game, to building a shelter.

Together, they had built just such a shelter.

Not that they all stayed at the base camp all the time; mages came and went in intervals of days and weeks, either singly or in small groups. Parties were dispatched to gather food, or travel to the wary nearby towns to barter for goods, or -- less frequently, nowadays -- to raid Chantry-held settlements for more Tranquil. Occasionally, stragglers and refugees showed up -- but those were rare, since the Tranquil rarely had the free enterprise to make such a journey themselves.

In the first years after the Kirkwall rebellion he and Hawke had traveled the southern kingdoms together, seeking out the Tranquil in every city and enclave and healing them, then letting them choose whether to go their own way or to join the slowly growing crowd of re-Awakened. As the war had grown more heated, however, the voices clamoring for Anders to retire from the raids had also grown. Many people could go underground in the cities, they argued, and help bring Tranquil and volunteers to safety. But Anders alone could heal them.

Or at least, the healing that only Anders and Justice could do together. When it came to the day-to-day healing at the camp, there honestly wasn't much for Anders to do -- many of the Reawakened were healers themselves, enough to take care of themselves and the others. Too many of the Tranquil had once been healing mages; not many creation and spirit mages even attempted (or were allowed to attempt) their Harrowing, and fewer passed. It was the reason healers were so rare in Thedas; as invaluable as their skills might have been in support of their comrades, when forced arbitrarily into single combat with a demon, there was little that healing magic could do. Only those mages talented enough to balance the healing schools with some other, more traditionally offensive school of magic (for Anders, it had been a mediocre command of elemental magic) could hope to pass that trial.

And so the magic-users who could have done the most good for the world were systematically weeded out, Anders thought bitterly, and put down. Maker forbid that healing mages should be allowed to compete with the Chantry-sponsored healers, or put the lie to the myth that mages were no more than destructive monsters. _But no more._

He'd held many roles in this camp over the years -- that of leader, administrator, and occasionally warrior -- but to his people, he was always and only their Healer.

And soon he wouldn't even be that any more.

Justice was right. He had been telling the truth -- of that Anders had never harbored any doubt; Justice never lied. Anders wasn't even sure the spirit _could_ , let alone _would_. But for a time he had clung desperately to the hope that the spirit might be _mistaken_. After all, when had this situation ever come about before? When had a spirit ever given so much of itself to the mortal world before? When had a spirit ever died?

But he could feel the difference, now. Always before when he braced himself, reached out to touch a Tranquil mind, and opened himself as a bridge between mage and spirit -- always before he could feel the rush of power as a raging torrent, catching him like driftwood in a flooding river as he tried to keep his bearings. He could only sustain it for a moment -- but a moment was all it ever took, to plant the foundations of a bridge to the Fade in the severed mind.

Now... now he could no longer ignore it; the spirit that shared his soul was weaker. The flow of power when he healed a new batch of Tranquil was softer, almost sluggish, and he had to hold the connection much longer before the bridge took hold. And when he finished -- when the last young man was led away by his assistants, stumbling and crying again for the first time in years -- Justice would no longer respond to him at all.

His nerve broke, and he put out an order throughout all the camp: No more raids were to be held, no more Tranquil were to be brought in, until further notice.

The order spread confusion throughout the camp, but Hawke backed him up on it; Hawke, who was just as much Justice's friend as Anders, who had been faithful to the both of them for all of these years. The other mage had always been better at persuading and managing people than Anders himself, and he guarded Anders' privacy with a firm hand.

Whatever they were speculating about him, Anders didn't hear it. He spent the days withdrawn (not _hiding)_  in his tent, lights dimmed, sound muffled, turning inwards. Reaching out for Justice, trying to feel the spirit; trying to call him back, to speak to him again. Trying to find some way to feed his own strength back to Justice, the way the spirit had always lent him strength and power when he needed it.

But for all his efforts, he got nothing back but stillness... and silence.

"Anders?" Hawke called softly, poking his head in the tent flap. 'Tent' was almost a misnomer, given the size and sturdiness of the structure, as much wood as it was canvas and filled with furniture and thick rugs for warmth. But none of the warmth reached him right now, huddled in a corner of their shared bed. "You missed dinner call. Again. I thought I'd come to check on the two of you."

Anders smiled at the show of concern, although it soon faded. How strange it was now to think that he had once tried to entice Hawke with the promise of being rid of Justice, of having Anders 'to himself,' as though any of Anders was his own to give away. How strange it was to think that Justice had once disapproved of Hawke, mistrusting his intentions towards his fellow mages and shunning the pain that love would bring them both -- would bring all three. How strange it was to think now that Justice might have been right, then.

If he'd never grown to love the spirit inside him -- his other self, his oldest friend -- then this wouldn't have been so hard.

He had always assumed that Justice would be the one to outlive him. Spirits were immortal, after all, and revolutionaries were distinctly not; he always had thought he would die, and Justice would vanish back into the Fade, carrying his memory of Anders into eternity. The thought that he would always be remembered, with fondness and respect, by someone (anyone) somewhere (anywhere) that thought he had done the right thing --

There were some nights when that had been the only thing that kept him going, the thought of being preserved and protected in Justice's memories. To be remembered by a spirit -- it was the closest that men could come to immortality without going mad.

But perhaps Justice was right; perhaps there was no expectation of immortality, except for what you left to your heirs to take with them into the future.

Hawke came inside, crossing over to the bed platform and leaning down to pull Anders into his arms. Anders didn't resist, but he did wince a bit into the kiss; he hadn't been keeping up with his bathing, and he knew he couldn't smell very pleasant right now.

"It's been two weeks, Anders," Hawke said softly. Had it really? Anders was surprised by the number. "If Justice were going to get better, wouldn't he have started by now?"

Anders desperately wanted to tell him that he was, that he had; that all they needed was more time for the spirit to recuperate, to heal. But while mortals could regenerate lost blood and heal torn flesh, in time, spirits didn't have that capacity; they weren't supposed to need it. Justice was just the same as he had been when Anders' nerve broke -- faint and weak, just barely holding onto a thread of coherence.

He would have liked to lie and tell Hawke that all they needed was more time. But on a night of blood and fire over ten years ago, he had sworn that he would never lie to Hawke again.

Justice had approved. He never liked lies, not even for a greater cause. Not even for _the_  cause.

"You're right... he's not getting better," Anders admitted in a whisper. "I can't hear him, I can barely feel him. I think..." He gulped a deep breath, needing the feeling of false steadiness it gave him. "I think one more will kill him."

The words hovered in the darkened tent, with a sinister weight and feel of their own. Hawke shifted, and Anders could read in his eyes what he was about to say.

"No!" Anders pulled out of Hawke's arms, coming to his feet by the end of the bed and glaring daggers at his lover. He'd thought Hawke, of all people, would be on his side in this. He'd thought Hawke of all people would understand -- that Justice wasn't just a convenient magical cure, wasn't just an unfeeling font of miracles. He'd thought if anyone would understand that Justice was a person -- with just as much right to live as anyone else -- it would be Hawke. "Don't you dare say it. I don't want to hear it."

"Anders..." Hawke sighed. "I know you don't want to, but you need to. You can't keep him here forever, love."

"Shut up! Just shut up!" Anders shouted. He knew it was cruel, he knew it was unfair, but he couldn't help himself; it just hurt too much, it was unbearable. "I know you don't care about him, you want him gone. You always wanted to get rid of him so you could have me for yourself!"

"Stop!" Hawke came to his feet, eyes blazing, jaw set in a steely line. "You don't get to say that. You don't get to say what I feel for him. You don't know what he means to me, has meant to me.

"I lived all my life in hiding, do you understand? Not just hiding from the Templars, from the Chantry, from the eyes of ordinary people, but hiding from the world of magic and spirits as well. I was always caught between them, terrified of both, never daring to be part of either." Hawke caught his breath, calming somewhat once the first furious rant was excised.

He went on, in a slightly calmer tone, the emotions leashed back beneath the surface again. "Justice was the spirit ever willing to be my friend. He showed me that the world beyond didn't have to be frightening, it didn't have to be bad. He taught me that I could be a part of it, that I could _change_ it for the better, that I could be more and do more than just cower all my life, thinking only of myself and a few others. And he's been a source of strength for me, a guiding light, for all these years we've been together." Hawke took a step closer, getting into Anders' personal space and crowding against him. "Don't try to tell me again that I don't care!"

Anders crumpled, wavering between collapsing back onto the bed or slumping into Hawke's arms. "I'm... sorry," he choked out. "It's just..."

"I know. I know!" Hawke made the decision for him, catching him by the elbows and pulling him forward. His scent enveloped Anders again, familiar and warm and soothing. "But you have to see that this is hurting him! Keeping him trapped here, unable to act, but unable to move on..." Slowly, Hawke shook his head. "This isn't what he wants."

"How can I know what he wants when I can't even _hear_ him?" Anders demanded raggedly.

Hawke pulled back, his expression stern. "He made his wishes clear when he and I spoke two weeks ago," he said sharply. "He wanted to keep going as long as he could. This is his life, Anders, this is his purpose. Holding him back from it will just eat him away from the inside -- and you too."

"Wh-what do you mean?" Anders said, caught off balance in more ways than one. "I'm not..."

"You're not a spirit, no. But you are a _healer_ ," Hawke emphasized. "It's what you are, it's what you've made your life to be. You can't turn your back on a patient you could have helped, not and stay yourself."

"Once he's gone, I won't have a choice!" Anders snarled.

"I know," Hawke murmured, pulling him closer. "But it's one thing to not have a choice, and another to have one and choose to do nothing. At least then you'll know that you did everything that you could. And so will Justice."

Anders shut his eyes tight, calling -- once more -- for the spirit within him. There was no answer, no voice telling him that Hawke's words were wrong... as much as he didn't want to believe they were right.

"I can't lose him," he said, and halfway through the word his voice broke and he was sobbing against Hawke's chest. "I can't, I can't..."

Somehow they both (or all) ended up on the bed, Hawke's strong arms around him, with his head pressed against Hawke's chest. When the tears had run their course he lay there still, listening to the beat of the other mage's heart; an echo just a few instants off from his own, comforting and familiar. But it was not the echo he longer to hear.

"When my father died..." Hawke started, his hands combing through Anders' hair stilling for a moment. "I mean. It's never pretty, but it wasn't quick either. It went on for a long time and towards the end of it, he didn't know me, he didn't know my mother. She couldn't bear to be in the room with him for more than a few minutes, so it was just me, by the end.

"I sat by his bed and I held his hand, and I watched my father decaying from the inside out. And the worst part..." His chest heaved for a moment. "The worst part was that the longer I sat there and stared at him, the harder it became to remember how he used to be. The way I remembered him as a child. Big. Big as the sky, and strong, and the smartest man in the world... all shrunk down to this little body in a bed."

Anders shifted a little, spreading his hand over Hawke's collarbone, in answer. Hawke reached up to take his hand, entwining their fingers and pressing firmly. He went on.

"After it was over... it was harder, but it was also easier," Hawke said. "I spent more time with the twins, and with mother, talking and reminiscing how he used to be... and the memory got a little more clear in my mind. But it never went quite back the way it was. If only we could have had some portrait... There will always be that shadow of the dying man in the bed, over his face.

"I wish, in some ways... if it always had to end the same way, I wish it had been over sooner," Hawke admitted, hushed with guilt. "That I hadn't had to see that. Because where does my father live now, if not in my memories?"

 

* * *

 

The next day, Hawke managed to persuade Anders to at least leave the tent. Dressed properly for the first time in a week, hands and face washed, he felt marginally more human -- at least if he didn't think about the awful quiet in his head.

  
But it was enough at least to return to work -- there was always more that needed to be done, even without the healing of the Tranquil. Slowly, he found himself drawn back into the familiar rhythm of the Re-Awakened camp.

He was deeply involved in a discussion with Omelas, his assistant -- two of his students were concerning him, a teenage boy with an uncontrolled temper and authority issues, and a former Tranquil who was having difficulty getting grips on her wild swings of emotion -- when a commotion outside caught his attention.

The tutor broke off mid-word when a knock on the wooden frame of the command pavilion was quickly followed by one of the excited scouts barging in. "Healer!" he blurted out. "There's someone come to see you -- come looking for you!"

Anders started to get up, then sank back down on the padded bench as the scout was followed by a knot of other mages, including Hawke. They surrounded -- escorted -- a pair of strangers; a short but broad-shouldered young man in plate armor, and a woman in robes with the familiar sunburst brand on her forehead. The way she moved, the way she looked right through things, the guiding hand on her shoulder told Anders everything he needed to know.

"Hawke, no," he begged him, backing away as far as he could without hitting the wall of the tent. "No more. No more Tranquil, please."

"I know, love, I know," Hawke said, pained. There was a tightness around his eyes, a strange fragile vulnerability to his expression, that Anders hadn't seen on him in many years. "Just... hear them out. Please."

Anders bit his lip, deliberately calling on the pain to ground him, to stifle the instinctive rejection that wanted to burst from his lips. When he thought he had control of himself, he took a deep breath and turned towards the strangers.

He could tell very quickly that the Tranquil woman was very badly off. Not all Tranquil were the same, or on the same level; some could live almost normal lives, aside from their dissonant serenity and dismembered dreams. Some were able to manage fairly complex, if routine, tasks and even make decisions on their own, like old Owain from back in Kinloch Hold. Others... could not.

Anders couldn't tell if there was some difference in the Rite, or some common trait in the Tranquil themselves, that turned them into little more than warm, breathing corpses; unless explicitly moved, guided, or commanded -- and sometimes not even then -- they would do nothing more but lie or stand there staring into nothingness. The worst Anders had ever seen was like a living statue; his limbs were pliant, but waxen, and would stay in whatever position they were put by others. He hadn't lasted very long.

"This is Metea," Hawke introduced the woman, gently guiding her forward, and then giving the man a nudge. "And this is Kavin."

The man stepped forward, and Anders' blood dropped cold as his eyes flicked across the familiar spots on his armor plate. The bracers were of a conspicuously different make than the rest of the set, and the breastplate had a raw mark where the sigil had been scoured off, but Anders could not fail to recognize the style. "Why has a Templar come into our sanctuary?" he demanded sharply.

"No, Serah, I'm not a Templar any more," the man -- boy, really -- said, wringing his hands anxiously. "I never wanted to be one in the first place, except..." He glanced at the woman, his face a study in unfettered emotion -- worry, fear, anger, but behind it all a tender caring.

Anders sighed. It was a familiar story, by now. Apart from the power trippers and the orphanage graduates, there was a third, much rarer type of Templar: the non-mage friends and family of mages lost -- to the Circle or otherwise -- who wanted to devote their life to protecting mages. The rare few, the only ones in whom the supposed spirit of the Templar order could truly be said to reside. He gentled his tone somewhat. "You joined the Order to protect your sister?"

"Not... no... not my sister, Serah," Kavin stuttered. He had a Marcher accent, a soft Starkhaven burr that Anders tried hard not to let prejudice him against the boy. "My mother."

Anders' head jerked back, and his eyes flew to the woman. Tranquility made it hard sometimes to judge age; in some it added years prematurely, while in others the eerie serenity kept their faces smooth: no need to worry about laugh-lines, after all, if you never laughed. But he would have never guessed this woman was old enough to have borne the boy. It must have happened while she was still very young, he realized with dismay. Still an apprentice.

"I grew up in the Chantry orphanage at Estwatch, outside of Starkhaven," Kavin began, by way of explanation. "I was a bit of troublemaker as a kid, always sneaking about... one day I got into the records room in the Chantry and found my own papers. On that day I learned I wasn't an orphan at all; my mother was still alive, in the Circle at Markham.

"I destroyed the papers, so the Chantry would forget about me, and started practicing... I became a recruit at sixteen," he said, sounding proud of himself despite everything. "By eighteen I had managed to get a transfer to Markham... but... when I found her, she was already..." His face fell.

Anders swallowed hard. "There was nothing you could have done," he said, mouth dry. "Most likely she was made Tranquil shortly after you were born."

He had no trouble following the chain of events that would have resulted from the boy's birth; he'd seen it play out time and time again during his time as a healer at the Circle. Newly-bereft mothers reacted in a variety of ways to the loss of their babies, few of them well. Whether Metea had fallen into a post-partum despair and been judged too weak to take the Harrowing; or whether she'd tipped over into uncontrollable rage, lashing out at her captors, and been restrained and tranquilized -- well, the end result would have been the same.

"I don't know, Ser. She don't talk about herself, no matter how you ask," Kavin said, shaking his head. "I looked after her... when the Circles fell, I got her out. I've looked after her ever since. We couldn't join the free mages, they wouldn't have us. And the Red Templars... well, I wouldn't have them." He flushed with some strong emotion, whether anger or shame Anders could not tell. But then he raised his eyes to meet Anders', and the hope and fear shining in them was overwhelming.

"But then I heard stories that there was a man who could fix Tranquility. We've been searching for you ever since. Please, Serah, can't you help her?" Kavin begged. He fell to his knees before Anders, twisting his hands together in helpless supplication. "Can't you do anything? Please? I just... I just want to know my mother."

Anders could see why Hawke had escorted the boy in; he could see it in the strain in his face, the unspoken plea. She could have been his mother. He could have been her son. If there had been any chance, any chance at all for him to save her, he would have taken it. No matter what the cost.

He shut his eyes tight, trying to block out the pleading faces before him. But he could not block out the presence stirring inside; faint, weak, but determined. _This is... wrong..._ the voice sighed. _Mothers should not be sundered from their children. Children should not be needlessly orphaned. Unjust..._

For a moment he wanted to scream at them all, rage at the injustice that had brought them to this pass: that all the world was here, pressing on them, demanding that they give and give and _give_ until nothing was left, and then give some more.

But this was what they had worked for, fought for. To help the injured, the suffering, the maimed; to give succor where no one else could, or would. They had dedicated themselves to this purpose, pledged themselves to a course that they could never turn back from -- not for loss and heartache, not even for death. Hawke had been right; Anders was still -- even now, after all these years -- Joined to that purpose. He still had not forgotten his oath, and he could never forget his Calling.

 _In death,_ Anders thought, _sacrifice._

He raised his hands and placed them on either side of the woman's head, as he had hundreds of times before. He reached for the spirit in his head and felt Justice respond, felt them join in power, in purpose, as he had countless times before. His other self, his closest confidante, his oldest friend.

He opened his heart and his soul, and he let him go.

* * *

 

~the end.


End file.
